Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

In the North the first words are, Help me; in the South, Love me.

We can never put ourselves in the shoes of children; we cannot fathom their thoughts, we lend them ours; and always following ourown reasoning, we stuff their heads with extravagance and error.

Temperance and labor are the two real physicians of man.

To abstain that we may enjoy is the epicurianism of reason.

Women, in general, are not attracted to art at all, nor knowledge, and not at all to genius.

A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

Chemistry... is like the maid occupied with daily civilisation; she is busy with fertilisers, medicines, glass, insecticides ... for she dispenses the recipes.

Childhood is the sleep of reason. [Fr., L'enfance est le sommeil de la raison.]

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

Everything degenerates in the hands of man.

It is not our criminal actions that require courage to confess, but those which are ridiculous and foolish.

A person who can break wind is not dead.

Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. It is strange that these voices often contradict each other?

I don't know what is truth,but I can tell you how to find it!

The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable.

One must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.

To study men, we must look close by; to study man, we must learn to look afar; if we are to discover essential characteristics, we must first observe differences.

Physical evils destroy themselves, or they destroy us.

Whoever blushes confesses guilt, true innocence never feels shame.

Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment.

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

Supreme happiness consists in self-content; that we may gain this self-content, we are placed upon this earth and endowed with freedom.

There is no folly of which a man who is not a fool cannot get rid except vanity; of this nothing cures a man except experience of its bad consequences, if indeed anything can cure it.

He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed.

The strength of the people is effective only if it is concentrated; it evaporates and is lost when it is dispersed, just as gunpowder scattered on the ground ignites only grain by grain.

But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people.

I bold it impossible, that the great monarchies of Europe can subsist much longer; they all affect magnificence and splendor.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls.

Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

This dog, which, although no beauty, was of an uncommon breed, I had made my friend and companion; and it certainly deserved the name better than the majority of those who had assumed it.

With children use force; with men reason; such is the natural order of things. The wise man requires no law.

Liberty is not to be found in any form of government; she is in the heart of the free man; he bears her with him everywhere.

Remorse sleeps in the atmosphere of prosperity.

Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.

At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Let them eat cake".

The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.

Money is the seed of money.

There is peace in dungeons, but is that enough to make dungeons desirable?

A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.

It is always a poor way of reading the hearts of others to try to conceal our own. [Fr., C'est toujours un mauvais moyen de lire dans le coeur des autres que d'affecter de cacher le sien.]

Men will argue more philosophically about the human heart; but women will read the heart of man better than they.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

He who pretends to look upon death without fear, lies

Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.

Each member of the community gives himself to it at the instant of its constitution, just as he actually is, himself and all his forces, including all goods in his possession.

Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.

I say to myself: "Who are you to measure infinite power?

If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.

She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces... But I loved her